Rigid, hinged-lid packets of cigarettes are currently the most widely marketed, by being easy to produce and easy and practical to use, and by effectively protecting the cigarettes inside.
In packets of cigarettes, loose tobacco powder (or flecks, i.e. minute fragments of tobacco which spill from the tips of the cigarettes due to movement of the packet) accumulate increasingly as the cigarettes inside the packet are consumed.
In addition to the above rigid, hinged-lid packets of cigarettes, rigid slide-open packets have been proposed comprising two partly separable containers, one inserted inside the other. In other words, a rigid, slide-open packet of cigarettes comprises an inner container, which houses a foil-wrapped group of cigarettes and is housed inside an outer container to slide, with respect to the outer container, between a closed configuration, in which the inner container is inserted inside the outer container, and an open configuration, in which the inner container is partly-extracted from the outer container.
A rigid, hinged-lid, slide-open packet of cigarettes has also been proposed in which the inner container has a hinged lid, which rotates between a closed position and an open position closing and opening an open top end of the inner container. The inner container lid has a connecting tab connected at one end to the lid, and at the other end to the outer container, to ‘automatically’ rotate the lid (i.e. without the user having to touch the lid) as the inner c.
However, when turned upside down (as often happens inside the user's bag or pocket), rigid, hinged-lid, slide-open packets of cigarettes tend to spill tobacco powder, which substantially escapes through the gap between the front edge of the top wall of the inner container lid and the opposite top edge of the front wall of the outer container. To prevent tobacco powder spill, it has been proposed to add a sealing flap connected (hinged) to the top edge of the front wall of the outer container and movable between a work position (assumed in the closed configuration, i.e. when the inner container is inserted fully inside the outer container) and a rest position (assumed in the open configuration, i.e. when the inner container is extracted partly from the outer container). In the work position, the sealing flap is perpendicular to the front wall of the outer container and located beneath the top wall of the inner container lid to prevent tobacco powder spill by ‘sealing’ the gap between the front edge of the top wall of the inner container lid and the opposite top edge of the front wall of the outer container. In the rest position, the sealing flap is parallel to the front wall of the outer container, to avoid interfering with the movement of the inner container with respect to the outer container.
In known rigid, hinged-lid, slide-open packets of cigarettes, however, it has been observed that the sealing flap does not always return from the rest to the work position A ‘automatically’ (i.e. with no help from the user) when the inner container is pushed from the open to the closed configuration (i.e. is pushed inside the outer container).